Creating a high-stakes testing experience for the web.
When they decided to bring high-stakes testing to web, Pearson VUE called Livefront.
The global leader in computer-based testing, Pearson VUE is trusted by hundreds of credential issuers across the globe to develop and administer testing programs on their behalf. Every year, millions of people take tests ranging from casual practice quizzes to high-stakes exams using the international firm's state-of-the-art testing technology. We partnered with Pearson VUE to fuse the integrity and reliability of proctored, in-person exams with the convenience and scalability of remote testing, combining disparate technologies in novel ways to secure the company's position as a market leader well into the future.
Our contributions
Vision & Strategy
- Product Strategy & Vision
- Concepting & Prototypes
Product Management
- Product Ownership
- Project Management
Product Design
- User Research
- Web Design
- Illustration
Development
- Front End
- Electron
Security meets scalability.
The gold standard of security in high-stakes exam administration, in-person proctoring has long been one of Pearson VUE's core service offerings. But with more and more organizations—especially institutions of higher learning—seeking to reduce overhead, finding ways to reduce the inherent dependence on a live, in-person proctor without compromising on test integrity has become a critical pursuit. Faced with this conundrum, we helped Pearson VUE transition from a service-driven model to a product-driven one by creating tools to let educators administer tests remotely at scale with the same high bar of trustworthiness. Using streaming video coupled with OS-level event detection and cutting-edge machine intelligence, our remote proctoring suite flags and escalates suspicious behavior automatically so human proctors can weed out cheating and deception asynchronously with a high degree of confidence.
Putting the "electron" in "electronic exams."
Users who don't wish to install another Chrome extension have the option to use the alternative of a dedicated desktop app. We built the app from the ground up in Electron, leveraging much of the existing web code and replacing Pearson VUE's legacy Adobe app altogether.
Livefront was essential to our ability to accelerate product-market fit. They bring the product design expertise and implementation efficiency that let us cycle faster through learning.
Getting started is a snap.
Ensuring security in testing requires controlling the test-taking environment for factors that might be used to cheat. At the beginning of each exam, test-takers verify their identity with a campus or state-issued ID and document their workspace by snapping photos in multiple directions. For test-takers using laptop or desktop machines, taking photos with their device's built-in webcam is awkward and ineffective, and forcing them to manually transfer pictures from a phone to the test-taking device isn't exactly user-friendly. We solved this problem through a lightweight SMS integration: users simply request a link via the web app, receive it on their phone, and open it in a mobile browser to upload or capture the required photos right from their mobile device.
Browser-based testing, extended.
To securely monitor the user and detect attempts to switch apps or copy and paste text, we wrote a custom Chrome extension to listen for system-level events and log them as timestamped metadata anchored to the exam's video output. Using the data collected this way, remote proctors can jump directly to the time code for suspicious events when reviewing exam footage for evidence of cheating.
Learning management built right in.
We built Pearson VUE's remote proctoring suite to integrate with Canvas, one of the most used and fastest growing learning management systems (LMS) in higher education, out of the box. Our elegant webhooks make it easy for students to start an exam right from within Canvas' UI, and for Pearson VUE to pass scoring and completion data back to Canvas' graph. And because we architected those hooks with an eye to extensibility, Pearson VUE is positioned well to integrate with other leading LMSes such as Blackboard and Moodle down the line with minimal code changes.